Not Dead Yet
by Lily Desdemona Potter
Summary: For Sixteen years she had lived in lies and secrets, but one effect makes a ripple that brings everything to light. Will she be able to kill her fathers evil side, or will she succumb to him for eternity. Twilight/HP Crossover!
1. Chapter 1

**Summery:** For fifteen years she had lived in lies and secrets, but one effect makes a ripple that brings everything to light. Will she be able to kill her fathers evil side, or will she succumb to him for eternity. Twilight/HP Crossover!

**Main Character : **

**Adopted Birth Certificate**

**Harper Jane Potter**

Sex: Female

Birth : July 31st 1980

Age: 17

Parents: Lilith Rose Evans Potter & James Henry Potter

**Real Birth:**

**Esmee Rosalina Riddle**

Sex: Female

Birth: July 31st 1979

Age: 18

Parents: Kira Rose Evans Malfoy Riddle & Thomas Marvolo Riddle

**Preface: I'm not dead.**

I never gave much thought to how I'd die, because really, It had already been mapped out. I would ether kill or be killed by Voldemort. Sounds simple, no? Well since when had Harper Jane Potter's life been easy? I think the only really safe years I had were when I was with my parents for the first year, and then fate decided to throw us a curve ball and no one was their to catch it.

Though I suppose now I have to rethink this all. My purpose in life was once to defeat the darkest wizard of the century, but was it ever really my place. The prophecy was talking about a child, most likely a boy, that was born too those who thrice defied Voldemort. I should point out my life has always been filled with lies. The first was the fact that Petunia Dursley was my only living relative, wrong, Petunia Dursley wasn't even related to me. Nether was Lillith Evans if I want to blow this prophecy out of the water. My life as I said was one big lie, the very first one was who my parents were.

I found out after my fifth year when I was almost 16 that I had been adopted, not by who you'd think ether. One morning my Aunt sat me down and layed it out real nice for me. My adopted parents had written a letter that explained everything and Aunt Petunia pretty much kicked me out on my ass, sad part was, I was in the process of grieving not only Sirius, my 'godfather' but my son and daughter who had died two weeks after their birth from the influenza.

Seems while certain strain is not active anymore, one of my fathers relatives died from it in 1918 and it happened to be his great great grandfathers mother, the gene was passed to him and layed dormant thanks to it being passed from the womb and had never awakened in any of the future generations, but when James Potter adopted me in blood and magic he gave me the dormant gene and not knowing this I never worried until Samuel and Selena died from the Spanish influenza gene. Magic could cure a lot of things, but muggle aliments were not one of them.

I tried to kill myself not long after but my attempt was throttled by a muggle man, Locke Jackson. The man was a war veteran from Hiroshima and was shocked to find a teenage girl wash up to his wooded area where he went to fish. You see I got so depressed I threw myself off the London bridge, When that didn't work I tried to cut my wrist, I almost died but Locke was attainment that I was not saved to die on him.

I ended up telling Locke everything, Magic, the war, my relatives, my real parents. You are probably wondering who my real parents are, and I plan to tell you just not at the moment. I stayed with Locke and learned from him what he'd learned in the military. He was all to happy to help a fellow solider as he put it. He even gave me his dog tags after I left almost a month and half latter, I was still depressed but not near as much as before. I visited my babies graves in godric hollow, the only place I allowed Dumbledore to bury them, even though he'd wanted to bury them in surrey cemetery or cremate them. I learned that day Dumbledore wasn't all he let on to be.

While their I was found by death eaters, and taken to Malfoy manner, by them I was already 16 or really 17 as I had been in 79 not 80 like I'd been led to believe and my name wasn't really Harper, but Esmee, I preferred my real name, never really feeling connected to Harper. While their I learned that Draco was as bad as he let on at school, his father even told me the real reason he had joined Voldemort.

I was shocked to say the least but hopeful. It was the day before the dark lord would come back to the manner for me, that I first experience the curse passed on to me by James Potter, I got sick. For a week my real father sat beside me, cared for me, yelled at me, and cursed James Potter for me, while I seemed to slowly die. I admit the Spanish Influenza kicked my ass, but when all seemed to be lost my appearance began to change, and my DNA unlocked.

Instead of looking like a female James Potter, With Black hair in spikes, and Light emerald eyes from Lily Potter, I grew to 5'6- a improvement from 5'2 - and my round face became heart shaped. My eyes stayed green but were more bright and darker emerald, and instead of round were almond shaped. My cheek bones were more angular and my lips were more pouted and cherry pink. My haired lightened drastically to a light caramel/golden brown, almost seeming blond in instances. When this happened if merged my two magical cores, the one that came with Harper and the one that was my original and it was able to fight the influenza in dormancy, it could come back but it would be unlikely and only with great deals of stress over years. If it ever did I wouldn't be able to fight it, I would die.

Poet, don't ya think? It has been almost 3 years since the war took off again. Harper Potter died and I became all that was left. I knew my father was corrupt now, but I wanted to bring him back, he was only the way he was from tearing his soul into peaces and losing himself in the dark arts. If their was a way to save him without killing him I'd find it. Though after 3 years my hope is turning into anger and hate, my will to live through this war is strong but where do I draw the line?

My father never made me take part in his raids or upheaval and I was grateful seeing this as a sign the real Tom Riddle was still in their somewhere, but after he killed Remus I really started to doubt my plane. Now he had had enough of my meddling, he dosent let me leave for anything other then raids he has all but forced me on and I fear the time had torn his soul to much, he will never be who he once was and I must accept this.

If you haven't figured it out then I'll put it bluntly.

My name is Esmee Rosalina Riddle, daughter of Kira Rose Platte Evans, Adopted daughter of two muggles and pureblood witch, and the daughter of Thomas Marvolo Riddle. Aren't you surprised I ain't dead yet?


	2. Chapter 2

**Note: Esmee with two E's is always Esmee Riddle, and Esme Cullen is always written with one E and will never have a Pov of her own, so I Think its pretty easy to remember.**

**Chapter 1:** **Outta Here**

**March 23rd, 1996 :**

**Esmee's Pov:**

I stared ahead of me as I put my hands over my stomach. It was a dream come true, I know not many teenagers wish for a child, but I always wanted a family, one that would really love me, unlike the one I was stuck with now. I only regretted that my babies would never get the chance to have a father. I had been in a relationship for three years with one Cedric Mason Diggory, he was my first and he'd always be in my heart. He would have been a great father and I had spent almost a month grieving for my children's father.

Though not many knew it, Cedric had jumped in front of me, and taken the killing curse to save not only me but our child. I had told people he'd just been the spare, and though it was true, Wormtail had almost hit me instead of Cedric with his killing curse. I sighed, letting my hand rub my stomach. Dumbledore had not been happy about my pregnancy, trying to convince me to abort it, or even give it up for adoption, put it in a orphanage. I would never let that happen and I had went a far step to make sure He could not touch a hair on my children's head.

"Potter are you listening to me!" I heard Snape yell and I looked up before gasping and lurching forward, hands gripping my stomach. "Potter?" He asked almost in concern reaching out to touch my shoulder, my short spiked black hair with fire red highlights standing out in the light of the dungeons. My other class mates were looking at me with shock, I looked up into Snape's eyes, my own Emerald green ones penetrating his black eyes, I thought I saw a hint of remorse in them.

"Please, The babies are coming." I gasped out and he stood straight up and pulled the desk back away from me, he lifted me up into his arms, and I was shocked at how muscular and strong he was. He looked to the shocked students and said in warning. "Stay here, write me a paper on why you should never get pregnant and go into labor during my class." I almost chocked on laughter but I was in too much pain. He started power walking to the infirmary, I looked up at his angular face and noticed he was not as ugly as he always seemed. His face was handsome, rugged but handsome, though he did have a disfigured nose. I smiled at him and lifted my hand to lay on his cheek. He looked down at me startled, and almost angry.

"Thank you, Professor Snape." I said and he smirked, a almost smile.

"Please call me Severus..your mother did." He spoke quietly and I nodded before screaming bloody murder. We arrived and he rushed me too a bed.

"What happened Severus!?"Poppy yelled as she ran to me to check me over. I gasped and screamed.

"She is in labor, Poppy!" He yelled like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"I should call Albus." I heard Poppy say as she charmed my skirt and panties away, I felt Severus lift my legs into the proper position and I blushed ten shades of red before shaking my head.

"No...Ahhhh! I don't want him anywhere near me or my babies." I screamed and cried as the pain hit a all new high. I heard Poppy sigh and put down the floo powder and walked over to her wand and call my doctor...healer.

"Sev..you'll stay with me, right?" I asked, I don't know why I asked him. He had always hated me and I had hated him until now. Was it because he had helped me? He looked at me shocked but pulled a chair to my side. He held my hand and I screamed. "Harper, Dr. Cullen is here." Poppy said and I felt a cold hand touch my shoulder. I opened my green eyes to see a older man, only in his early twenties and he had pale skin, the palest I have ever seen. He had topaz colored eyes, beautiful eyes, and he had purplish bruises under them. His hair was slicked back a bit and golden blond, he was so beautiful, a inhuman beauty.

"How are you doing, Ms. Potter?" He asked and I smiled and laughed as the pain came back. "I've been better..." I spoke quietly, and I could see he was transfixed on my hair and eyes, I must look like someone too him. I had seen the same look when everyone looked at me and then it was usually followed by _'you looked so much like your parents.'_

"Push, Ms. Potter, the babies wish to come out now." He said calmly as he sat in-between my legs, I blushed, especially when I felt the cold hands there, I was slightly shocked his hands were still so cold event through the gloves he wore over them, though it did stop the intense burning down there a bit.

….................................. ^ - ^

**1 hour 20 Minutes Latter : 4:20 P.M.**

"Two Beautiful babies...odd.." I heard Dr. Cullen speak from in front of me. I tried to lean up to look but I couldn't move my body, I was in to much pain and I was to tired. I started to panic looking to Severus at my side.

"What is wrong...why are they not crying?" I asked, they had each let out a long scream when born but they were quiet now, too quiet. Severus looked to me and smiled, a look of worry in his black eyes, something I had never seen before. I was shocked but happy.

"Hmmm...looks like they have a bit of fluids in their lungs." Dr. Cullen said and I gasped and held my arms out for them. "That isn't bad is it...they'll be ok right?" I asked and he looked at me in sadness, but a warm smile.

"They should be, did you get a cold while pregnant, any illnesses?" He asked and I nodded, I had gotten real sick with a cold for almost a week during my sixth month. He hmm'd and I blinked and he walked forward and put my babies in my arms. I looked at each, they were sleeping, but then they opened their eyes and I gasped. They had my green eyes, I smiled, I knew muggle babies always had blue eyes at birth but magical babies didn't go through that phase. The boy had odd colored hair, it was a old mix of brown and red and blond..I'd almost describe it as Penny colored hair, bronze maybe. The girl had a softer curly version of her brothers hair.

"What are their names?" Dr. Cullen asked and I looked up at him and smile.

"Samuel Tobias Diggory, and Selena Mason Diggory." I said and looked to Severus and smiled at him. "I chose Tobias after your middle name, I remember once seeing it in Sirius' year book thing, and I'd like you to be Sam's godfather, Poppy can you be his godmother?" I asked and they each smiled, Poppy tearing up and I chuckled before Dr. Cullen smiled as well and handed me a small bottle of liquid.

"For the liquid in their lungs...I think your cold just transferred to them through the womb. They'll be fine." He said and then shook hands with Poppy and gave her two birth certificates and left. I handed Samuel to Severus and Selena to Poppy before unbuttoning my top, I looked at Severus from the corner of my eye and chuckled at his soft embarrassed look.

**Two Week Latter : April 8th 1996**

"Poppy why wont you let me see them?" I asked, almost in hysteric's. Albus was also in the room and Severus was with the twins. Almost a week after their birth they started getting sick, the pills didn't seem to work at all. I was so afraid, I wasted no time to bring them to Poppy. Poppy gave me a saddened look and sat me down on the edge of a bed.

"Harper, a long time ago you fathers great great grandmother, Eris Potter visited a muggle settlement in a American state, Chicago I believe it is called. While their a muggle illness was spreading, called the Spanish Influenza. It was infecting people left and right and Eris was not spared. She was pregnant with James' great grandfather and though she survived to give birth to her son, the gene of the influenza was passed on to Henry." Poppy began and I looked at her, shocked. Was she saying what I was thinking she as saying. "The gene continued to pass through the generations, thankfully not becoming active, until now. You have the gene passed on from James and it has become active in Sam and Lena. Harper, they have the Spanish Influenza." She finished and I looked on, seeing Dumbledore was standing there just sucking on his damned lemon drop. Did he not care that my son and daughter were dying? I screamed in anguish and cried, knowing Poppy would not let me near my babies while they were infectious.

…................................................................................. ^ - ^

**Three days latter : April 11th 1996**

I cried as I stared down at my fragile little babies still body. Pale and cold, so cold. I breathed in and let my fingers trail over Selena and Samuel's faces, their bronze colored hair had darkened a bit to a more brown color, but not much and their eyes were closed but I didn't wish to see their emerald eyes staring back at me dead of life.

"Harper?"I heard a female voice ask from my side and I turned to see the one I knew I could always count on. Hermione stood in all her glory, curly honey brown hair, and heart shaped face, her doe brown eyes staring back into my green ones. Her eyes sad, I had named her godmother of Lena and Remus had been her godfather, but Remus couldn't be here – he had to care for Sirius, who wasn't happy about not being here for me.

"Mione..." I whispered as tears rushed to my eyes, I inhaled but when I exhaled tear broke lose and layed by head onto the area beside my babies bodies, my hand clutching at them. "My babies...why?!"I gasped out in my anguish.

Hermione walked forward and pulled me back, hugging me into herself, my head resting in the crock of her neck, tears falling like a rain storm.

"Everything will be ok, you'll see them again some day. Please Rosie..don't do anything stupid." She said and kissed the corner of my mouth. Not many realized it but Hermione Jean Granger was bisexual, which wasn't unusual in the wizard word, it Heterosexuality that was put down in the Wizardry world, though it could have been because Females could get other females pregnant and the same went for males. Hermione had been very happy about this, she loved children and if she every married the fairer sex she now knew she could have them.

I sobered up and saw Dumbledore enter, he looked at me sadly but I could still see the ever present twinkle in his eyes, like he was happy my babies were dead. I felt a surge of hate for the man and was shocked at it, but pushed it to the back of my mind.

"Harper, I am sorry for your lost. I have made arrangements to allow you to be dismissed from classes and allowed to work on your schoolwork with Miss. Granger here. The only class I could not get the Professor's approval with was DADA, I am sorry but you must attend it, regardless." He said and I sighed, my eyes I am sure were puffy and red.

"Now I have also made arrangement for someone to take the bodies and cremate them..." I snapped my head up and glared at him harshly.

"No! My babies are not being cremated, they will have a proper burial." I almost screamed, tears threatening to leak through my eye sockets. He seemed shocked before sighing. "I'll have them buried in Surrey them." He said and I stood up and snarled.

"Never! I wish for them to be buried next to my parents, in Godric's hollow...Amos said he himself had buried Cedric close to them so I would someday have a place to be rested next to him." She said and he sighed again, his twinkle was finally gone but he nodded.

"If it will appease you...I'll make the arrangements." He said and popped a lemon drop into his mouth and left, leaving me and Hermione to grieve. I would join my babies, maybe not now but soon.

…......................................... ^ - ^

**May 13th 1996 : Department of Mysteries**

_**(This will almost seem word for word from the book....that cause it almost is. I do not own most the writing in this section, so please don't sue. Also this is going to be in Normal Pov until further notice.)**_

Harper would admit this wasn't one of her brightest moments. She was standing here now though, her black spiky hair in even more of a disray, her body was pudgier then normal, but that was because of pregnancy weight she had not bothered to loose, but why should she have? Her babies were dead, and she was left in a world were only select few cared about her.

The moment she started having visions of Sirius being held and tortured by Voldemort she had gotten up from her slump and vowed she would save her godfather, she would need him to help her live in this world...she had been so close to just letting herself die but Fred, George and Hermione would have none of it. She wasn't even sure if Ron and Ginny were her friends anymore, they had avoided her since she had been noticed as publicly pregnant, almost like it was something contagious in their minds.

She wouldn't think of that though, they were here with her now, along with other members of the DA.

Black shapes were emerging out of thin air all around them, blocking their way left and right; eyes glinted through slits in hoods, a dozen lit wand tips were pointing directly at their hearts; Ginny gave a gasp of horror.

"Give the prophecy To me, Potter," repeated the drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy as he held out his hand, palm up.

Harper's insides plummeted sickeningly. They were trapped, and outnumbered two to one.

"To me," said Malfoy yet again. Harper just stared with unfeeling green eyes, they had not shown a ounce of emotion since Sam and Lena's death and she didn't feel the need to feel anything now.

"Where's Sirius?" She said, more then asked.

Several of the Death Eaters laughed; a harsh female voice from the midst of the shadowy figures to Harper's left said triumphantly, "The Dark Lord always knows!"

"Always," echoed Malfoy softly. Though Harper thought she caught a hint of not only fear but regret in his voice, "Now, give me the prophecy Potter." He spoke harshly and Harper just pushed it back into her subconscious, she could bring it forth to dwell on again latter.

"I want to know where Sirius is!" She repeated, just as emotionless as before. This seemed to amuse but also confuse many of the enemy.

_"I want to know where Sirius is_!" mimicked the woman to her left. Harper just rolled her eyes, the women was horrible, not near as good at mimicking the emotionless tone as she seemed to think she could be...to much emotion for Harper's taste.

She and her fellow Death Eaters had closed in so that they were mere feet away from Harper and the others, the light from their wands dazzling Harper's eyes.

"You've got him," Hissed Harper, ignoring the rising panic in her chest, the dread she had been fighting since they had first entered the ninety-seventh row. "He's here. I know he is, and I want him back!" She said for the first time with any emotion, her voice almost a hiss. This seemed to scare them a bit, but it didn't denter the mocking female.

"The _little baby woke up jwightened and fort what it dweamed was twoo_," said the woman in a horrible, mock baby voice. Harper felt Ron stir beside her.

"Don't do anything," Harper muttered. "Not yet -"

The woman who had mimicked her let out a raucous scream of laughter.

"You hear her? _You hear her_? Giving instructions to the other children as though she thinks of fighting us!"

"Oh, you don't know Potter as I do, Bellatrix," said Malfoy softly. "She has a great weakness for heroics; the Dark Lord understands this about her. Now give _me the prophecy, Potter_." Harper could tell Malfoy was getting impatient and felt a smirk grace her face as she lowered her head clutching at the blue spear in her hand.

"I know Sirius is here," said Harper, though panic was causing her chest to constrict and she felt as though she could not breathe properly. "I know you've got him!" She was starting to tire of this game, and she was starting to sound like a broken record.

More of the Death Eaters laughed, though the woman laughed loudest of all.

"It's time you learned the difference between life and dreams, Potter," said Malfoy. "Now give me the prophecy, or we start using wands."

"Go on, then, use your wands." said Harper, raising her own wand to chest height. As she did so, the five wands of Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny and Luna rose on either side of her. The knot in Harper's stomach tightened. If Sirius really was not here, she had led her friends to their deaths for no reason at all…

But the Death Eaters did not strike.

"Hand over the prophecy and no one need get hurt," said Malfoy coolly.

It was Harper's turn to laugh. It was bitter laugh and she saw not only her friends shiver but a few of the death eaters, she could only guess it was similar to Bellatrix's...that was her name she thought.

"Yeah, right!" She said. "1 give you this - prophecy, is it? And you'll just let us skip off home, will you?"

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the female Death Eater shrieked: 'Accio _proph_—'

Harper though was ready for her: she shouted '_Protego_!' before the other death eater had finished her spell, and though the glass sphere slipped to the tips of her fingers she managed to cling on to it.

"Oh, she knows how to play, little bitty baby Potter," she said, her mad eyes staring through the slits in her hood. "Very well, then -"

"I TOLD YOU, NO!" Lucius Malfoy roared at the woman. "If you smash it -!"

Harper's mind was racing. The Death Eaters wanted this dusty spun-glass sphere. She had no interest in it. She just wanted to get them all out of this alive, to make sure none of her friends paid a terrible price for her stupidity…

The woman stepped forward, away from her fellows, and pulled off her hood. Azkaban had hollowed Bellatrix Lestrange's face, making it gaunt and skull-like, but it was alive with a feverish, fanatical glow. She could see though that her own appearance almost matched this womens in a sick and twisted way. Bellatrix was older, much so, and she had seen how twin like she herself had looked to Nymphadora Tonks who was also related to Sirius.

"You need more persuasion?" she said, her chest rising and falling rapidly. "Very well - take the smallest one," she ordered the Death Eaters beside her. "Let her watch while we torture the little girl. I'll do it.'

Harper felt the others close in around Ginny; she stepped sideways so that she was right in front of her, the prophecy held up to her chest.

"You'll have to smash this if you want to attack any of us," She told Bellatrix. "I don't think your boss will be too pleased if you come back without it, will he?"

She did not move; she merely stared at him, the tip of her tongue moistening her thin mouth.

"So," said Harper, almost like she was making small talk, "what kind of prophecy are we talking about, anyway?"

She could not think about what to do but to keep talking. Neville's arm was pressed against hers, and she could feel him shaking; she could feel one of the others' quickened breath on the back of her head. She was hoping they were all thinking hard about ways to get out of this, because her mind was blank, and if it came down to it she would turn her self into the death eaters with the prophecy, maybe she'd die quick and be aloud to see her children again.

"What kind of prophecy?" repeated Bellatrix, the grin fading from her face. "You jest, Harper Potter."

"Nope, not jesting," said Harper her eyes flicking from Death Eater to Death Eater, looking for a weak link, a space through which they could escape. "How come Voldemort wants it?"

Several of the Death Eaters let out low hisses.

"You dare speak his name?" whispered Bellatrix.

"Yeah," said Harper, maintaining her tight grip on the glass ball, expecting another attempt to bewitch it from her. "Yeah, I've got no problem with saying Vol—"

"Shut your mouth!" Bellatrix shrieked. "You dare speak his name with your unworthy lips, you dare besmirch it with your half-blood's tongue, you dare -"

"Did you know he's a half-blood too?' said Harper recklessly. Hermione gave a little moan in her ear, a almost silent warning. "Voldemort? Yeah, his mother was a witch but his dad was a Muggle - or has he been telling you lot he's pure-blood?"

"STUPEF—"

"NO"

A jet of red light had shot from the end of Bellatrix Lestrange's wand, but Malfoy had deflected it; his spell caused hers to hit the shelf a foot to the left of Harper and several of the glass orbs there shattered.

Two figures, pearly-white as ghosts, fluid as smoke, unfurled themselves from the fragments of broken glass upon the floor and each began to speak; their voices vied with each other, so that only fragments of what they were saying could be heard over Malfoy and Bellatrix's shouts.

'… _at the solstice will come a new_ …' said the figure of an old, bearded man.

"DO NOT ATTACK! WE NEED THE PROPHECY!"

"She dared - She dares -" shrieked Bellatrix incoherently, "she stands there - filthy half-blood -"

"WAIT UNTIL WE'VE GOT THE PROPHECY!" bawled Malfoy.

"… _and none will come after_…" said the figure of a young woman.

The two figures that had burst from the shattered spheres had melted into thin air. Nothing remained of them or their erstwhile homes but fragments of glass upon the floor. They had, however, given Harper an idea. The problem was going to be conveying it to the others.

"You haven't told me what's so special about this prophecy I'm supposed to be handing over," She said, playing for time. She moved her foot slowly sideways, feeling around for someone else's.

"Do not play games with us, Potter," said Malfoy.

"I'm not playing games," said Harper, half her mind on the conversation, half on her wandering foot. And then she found someone's toes and pressed down upon them. A sharp intake of breath behind her told her they were Hermione's.

"What?" she whispered.

"Dumbledore never told you the reason you bear that scar was hidden in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries?" Malfoy sneered.

"I – what?" said Harper. And for a moment she quite forgot her plan. "What about my scar?" Real emotion finally showing on her hollow face.

_"What_?" whispered Hermione more urgently behind her. Harper almost cringed, If she didn't hurry and answer her friend she was sure she'd end up grabbing Harper's ass or something. The mental picture almost made her laugh, almost.

"Can this be?" said Malfoy, sounding maliciously delighted; some of the Death Eaters were laughing again, and under cover of their laughter, Harper hissed to Hermione, moving her lips as little as possible, "Smash shelves -"

"Dumbledore never told you?" Malfoy repeated. "Well, this explains why you didn't come earlier, Potter, the Dark Lord wondered why -'

"- when I say _now -"_

"- you didn't come running when he showed you the place where it was hidden in your dreams. He thought natural curiosity would make you want to hear the exact wording…"

"Did he?" said Harry. Behind her she felt rather than heard Hermione passing his message to the others and she sought to keep talking, to distract the Death Eaters. "So he wanted me to come and get it, did he? Why?"

_"Why_?" Malfoy sounded incredulously delighted. "Because the only people who are permitted to retrieve a prophecy from the Department of Mysteries, Potter, are those about whom it was made, as the Dark Lord discovered when he attempted to use others to steal it for him."

"And why did he want to steal a prophecy about me?"

"About both of you, Potter, about both of you… haven't you ever wondered why the Dark Lord tried to kill you as a baby?"

Harper stared into the slitted eye-holes through which Malfoy's grey eyes were gleaming. Was this prophecy the reason Harper's parents had died, the reason she carried her lightning-bolt scar? Was the answer to all of this clutched in her hand?

"Someone made a prophecy about Voldemort and me?" She all but asked quietly, gazing at Lucius Malfoy, her fingers tightening over the warm glass sphere in her hand. It was hardly larger than a Snitch and still gritty with dust. "And he's made me come and get it for him? Why couldn't he come and get it himself?"

"Get it himself?" shrieked Bellatrix, over a cackle of mad laughter.

"The Dark Lord, walk into the Ministry of Magic, when they are so sweetly ignoring his return? The Dark Lord, reveal himself to the Aurors, when at the moment they are wasting their time on my dear cousin?"

"So, he's got you doing his dirty work for him, has he?" said Harrper. "Like he tried to get Sturgis to steal it - and Bode?"

"Very good, Potter, very good…" said Malfoy slowly. "But the Dark Lord knows you are not unintell—"

"NOW!" yelled Harry.

Five different voices behind her bellowed, "_REDUCTO_!" Five curses flew in five different directions and the shelves opposite them exploded as they hit; the towering structure swayed as a hundred glass spheres burst apart, pearly-white figures unfurled into the air and floated there, their voices echoing from who knew what long-dead past amid the torrent of crashing glass and splintered wood now raining down upon the floor.

"RUN!" Harper yelled, as the shelves swayed precariously and more glass spheres began to fall from above. She seized a handful of Hermione's robes and dragged her forwards, holding one arm over her head as chunks of shelf and shards of glass thundered down upon them. A Death Eater lunged forwards through the cloud of dust and Harper elbowed him hard in the masked face; they were all yelling, there were cries of pain, and thunderous crashes as the. shelves collapsed upon themselves, weirdly echoing fragments of the Seers unleashed from their spheres .

Harper found the way ahead clear and saw Ron, Ginny and Luna sprint past her, their arms over their heads; something, heavy struck her on the side of the face but she merely ducked her head and sprinted onwards; A hand caught her by the shoulder; he heard Hermione shout, "_Stupefy_!" The hand released her at once -

They were at the end of row ninety-seven; Harper turned right and began to sprint in earnest; She could hear footsteps right behind her and Hermione's voice urging Neville on; straight ahead, the door through which they had come was ajar; Harper could see the glittering light of the bell jar; she pelted through the doorway, the prophecy still clutched tight and safe in her hand, and waited for the others to hurtle over the threshold before slamming the door behind them ------

…...........................................................….........................^ - ^

Harper did not have to think; there was no choice. She had caused her friends too be hurt, Hermione was close to dead because of her foolishness, Ron was acting like a idiot...a child, and Ginny had a broken ankle and ribs. It also appeared she would be the cause of Neville joining his parents, there was no choice; The prophecy was hot with the heat of her clutching hand as she held it out. Malfoy jumped forwards to take it.

Then, high above them, two more doors burst open and five more people sprinted into the room: Sirius, Remus, Moody, Tonks and Kingsley.

Malfoy turned, and raised his wand, but Tonks had already sent a Stunning Spell right at him. Harper did not wait to see whether it had made contact, but dived off the dais out of the way. The Death Eaters were completely distracted by the appearance of the members of the Order, who were now raining spells down upon them as they jumped from step to step towards the sunken floor. Through the darting bodies, the flashes of light, Harper could see Neville crawling along. She dodged another jet of red light and flung herself flat on the ground to reach Neville.

"Are you OK?" She yelled, as another spell soared inches over their heads.

"Yes," said Neville, trying to pull himself up.

"And Ron?" Harper asked.

"I dink he's all righd - he was still fighding de brain when I lefd -"

The stone floor between them exploded as a spell hit it, leaving a crater right where Neville's hand had been only seconds before; both scrambled away from the spot, then a thick arm came out of nowhere, seized Harper around the neck and pulled her upright, so that her toes were barely touching the floor.

"Give it to me," growled a voice in her ear, "give me the prophecy -"

The man was pressing so tightly on Harper's windpipe that she could not breathe. Through watering eyes she saw Sirius dueling with a Death Eater some ten feet away; Kingsley was fighting two at once; Tonks, still halfway up the tiered seats, was firing spells down at Bellatrix - nobody seemed to realize that Harper was dying. Part of Harper was happy, she wanted death. She could then see her love, her children and her parents once again, but at what price? Her friends would surely miss her, and Sirius, Sirius had already lost so much, he needed her just as much as she needed him. With her mind made up she turned her wand backwards towards the man's side, but had no breath to utter an incantation, and the man's free hand was groping towards the hand in which Harper was grasping the prophecy.

"AARGH!"

Neville had come lunging out of nowhere; unable to articulate a spell, he had jabbed Hermione's wand hard into the eyehole of the Death Eaters mask. The man relinquished Harper at once with a howl of pain. Harper whirled around to face him and gasped:

_"STUPEFY!"_

The Death Eater keeled over backwards and his mask slipped off: it was Macnair, Buckbeak's would-be killer, one of his eyes now swollen and bloodshot.

"Thanks!" Harper said to Neville, pulling him aside as Sirius and his Death Eater lurched past, dueling so fiercely that their wands were blurs; then Harper's foot made contact with something round and hard and she slipped. For a moment she thought she had dropped the prophecy, but then she saw Moody's magical eye spinning away across the floor.

Its owner was lying on his side, bleeding from the head, and his attacker was now bearing down upon Harper and Neville: Dolohov, his long pale face twisted with glee.

_"Tarantallegra_!" he shouted, his wand pointing at Neville, whose legs went immediately into a kind of frenzied tap-dance, unbalancing him and causing him to fall to the floor again. "Now, Potter -"

He made the same slashing movement with his wand that he had used on Hermione just as Harper yelled, "Protege!"

Harper felt something streak across her face like a blunt knife; the force of it knocked her sideways and she fell over Neville's jerking legs, but the Shield Charm had stopped the worst of the spell.

Dolohov raised his wand again. "_Accio proph_—"

Sirius had hurtled out of nowhere, rammed Dolohov with his shoulder and sent him flying out of the way. The prophecy had again flown to the tips of Harper's fingers but she had managed to cling on to it. Now Sirius and Dolohov were dueling, their wands flashing like swords, sparks flying from their wand-tips -

Dolohov drew back his wand to make the same slashing movement he had used on Harper and Hermione. Springing up, Harper yelled, "_Petrificus Totalus_!." _'No one threatens my family!'_ Harper thought as once again, Dolohov's arms and legs snapped together and he keeled over backwards, landing with a crash on his back.

"Nice one!" shouted Sirius, forcing Harper's head down as a pair of Stunning Spells flew towards them. "Now I want you to get out of-"

They both ducked again; a jet of green light had narrowly missed Sirius. Across the room Harper saw Tonks fall from halfway up the stone steps, her limp form toppling from stone seat to stone seat and Bellatrix, triumphant, running back towards the fray.

"Harry, take the prophecy, grab Neville and run!" Sirius yelled, dashing to meet Bellatrix. Harper did not see what happened next: Kingsley swayed across her field of vision, battling with the pockmarked and no longer masked Rookwood; another jet of green light flew over Harper's head as she launched herself towards Neville -

"Can you stand?" She bellowed in Neville's ear, as Neville's legs jerked and twitched uncontrollably. "Put your arm round my neck -"

Neville did so - Harper heaved, She was not in the right shape for this, her bones she felt creak as she tried though — Neville's legs were still flying in every direction, they would not support him, and then, out of nowhere, a man lunged at them: both fell backwards, Neville's legs waving wildly like an overturned beetle's, Harper with her left arm held up in the air to try to save the small glass ball from being smashed.

"The prophecy, give me the prophecy, Potter!" snarled Lucius Malfoy's voice in her ear, and Harper felt the tip of Malfoy's wand pressing hard between her ribs.

"No - get - off - me… Neville - catch it!"

Harper flung the prophecy across the floor, Neville span himself around on his back and scooped the ball to his chest. Malfoy pointed the wand instead at Neville, but Harper jabbed her own wand back over her shoulder and yelled, "_I__mpedimenta_!"

Malfoy was blasted off her back as Harper scrambled up again she looked around and saw Malfoy smash into the dais on which Sirius and Bellatrix were now dueling. Malfoy aimed his wand at Harper and Neville again, but before he could draw breath to strike, Lupin had jumped between them.

"Harper, round up the others and GO!"

She didn't need to be told twice –

Harper seized Neville by the shoulder of his robes and lifted him bodily on to the first tier of stone steps; Neville's legs twitched and jerked and would not support his weight; Harper heaved again with all the strength she possessed and she was sure she felt her back crack under the pressure and slowly pain flooded her but she ignored it, and they climbed another step.

A spell hit the stone bench at Harper's heel; it crumbled away and he fell back to the step below. Neville sank to the ground, his legs still jerking and thrashing, and he thrust the prophecy into his pocket.

"Come on!" said Harper desperately, hauling at Neville's robes. "Just try and push with your legs -"

She gave another stupendous heave and Neville's robes tore all along the left seam - the small spun-glass ball dropped from his pocket and, before either of them could catch it, one of Neville's floundering feet kicked it: it flew some ten feet to their right and smashed on the step beneath them. As both of them stared at the place where it had broken, appalled at what had happened, a pearly-white figure with hugely magnified eyes rose into the air, unnoticed by any but them..Harper could see its mouth moving, but in all the crashes and screams and yells surrounding them, not one word of the prophecy could be heard. The figure stopped speaking and dissolved into nothingness.

"Harper, I'm sorry!' cried Neville, his face anguished as his legs continued to flounder. "So so sorry, Harper, I didn'd bean do -"

"It doesn't matter!" Harper shouted. "Just try and stand, let's get out of -"

_"Dubbledore_!" said Neville, his sweaty face suddenly transported, staring over Harper's shoulder.

"What?"

"DUBBLEDORE!"

Harper turned to look where Neville was staring. Directly above them, framed in the doorway from the Brain Room, stood Albus Dumbledore, his wand aloft, his face white and furious. Harper felt a kind of electric charge surge through every particle of her body - _they were saved_. Though this was followed by hate of being saved, and by whom. She still had not fully forgiven Dumbledore for being so distant from her and from trying to control how she dealt with her children's death.

Dumbledore sped down the steps past Neville and Harper, who had no more thoughts of leaving. Dumbledore was already at the foot of the steps when the Death Eaters nearest realized he was there and yelled to the others. One of the Death Eaters ran for it, scrabbling like a monkey up the stone steps opposite. Dumbledore's spell pulled him back as easily and effortlessly as though he had hooked him with an invisible line -

Only one pair was still battling, apparently unaware of the new arrival. Harper saw Sirius duck Bellatrix's jet of red light: he was laughing at her.

"Come on, you can do better than that!" he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room.

The second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest.

The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock.

Harper released Neville, though she was unaware of doing so. She was jumping down the steps again, pulling out her wand, as Dumbledore, too, turned towards the dais.

It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil hanging from the arch.

Harper saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on her godfather's wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in a high wind, then fell back into place.

Harper heard Bellatrix Lestrange's triumphant scream, but knew it meant nothing - Sirius had only just fallen through the archway, he would reappear from the other side any second…

But Sirius did not reappear.

"SIRIUS!" Harper yelled, for once with real lasting emotion. "SIRIUS!"

She had reached the floor, her breath coming in searing gasps. Sirius must be just behind the curtain, She, Harper, would pull him back out…

But as she reached the ground and sprinted towards the dais, Lupin grabbed Harry around the chest, holding her back.

"There's nothing you can do, Rosie -" He said lovingly, using the nickname her mother and latter Hermione had coned for her.

"Get him, save him, he's only just gone through!"

"- it's too late, Harper!" Remus all but yelled.

"We can still reach him -" Harper struggled hard and viciously, but Lupin would not let go…

"There's nothing you can do, Harper… nothing… he's gone."

_'NO NO NO NO NO'_ was the only thing repeating in Harper's mind.

…....................................................................................... ^ - ^

**1 hour latter : Albus Dumbledore's office**

Harper's feet hit solid ground; her knees buckled a little and the golden wizard's head fell with a resounding _dunk_ to the floor. She looked around and saw that she had arrived in Dumbledore's office. Her heart felt dead, her face...hell everything hurt.

Everything seemed to have repaired itself during the Headmaster's absence. The delicate silver instruments stood once more on the spindle-legged tables, puffing and whirring serenely The portraits of the headmasters and headmistresses were snoozing in their frames, heads lolling back in armchairs or against the edge of the picture. Harper looked through the window. There was a cool line of pale green along the horizon: dawn was approaching.

The silence and the stillness, broken only by the occasional grunt or snuffle of a sleeping portrait, was unbearable to her. If her surroundings could have reflected the feelings inside her, the pictures would have been screaming in pain. She walked around the quiet, beautiful office, breathing quickly, trying not to think. But She had to think… there was no escape…

It was her fault Sirius had died; it was all her fault. It was her fault that Cedric had died, it was her fault that her babies had died. If she, Harper, had not been stupid enough to fall for Voldemort's trick, if she had not been so convinced that what she had seen in her dream was real, if she had only opened her mind to the possibility that Voldemort was, as Hermione had said, banking on Harper's _love of playing the hero…_

It was unbearable, she would not think about it, she could not stand it… there was a terrible hollow inside him he did not want to feel or examine, a dark hole where Sirius had been, where Sirius had vanished, were all those close to her had disappeared; She did not want to have to be alone with that great, silent space, she could not stand it, but she knew she would have too, but she could simply end it. She would..just not now, not at the moment, she would take the pain she felt, the pain she deserved for her sins and she would wallow in it.

A picture behind her gave a particularly loud grunting snore, and a cool voice said, "Ali … Harper Potter …"

Phineas Nigellus gave a long yawn, stretching his arms as he surveyed Harper out of shrewd, narrow eyes.

" And what brings you here in the early hours of the morning?" said Phineas eventually, "This office is supposed to be barred to all but the rightful Headmaster. Or has Dumbledore sent you here? Oh, don't tell me …" He gave another shuddering yawn. "Another message for my worthless great-great-grandson?"

Harper could not speak. Phineas Nigellus did not know that Sirius was dead, but Harper could not tell him. To say it aloud would be to make it final, absolute, irretrievable. It would kill what little humanity she had left.

A few more of the portraits had stirred now. Terror of being interrogated made Harper stride across the room and seize the doorknob.

It would not turn. She was shut in.

"I hope this means," said the corpulent, red-nosed wizard who hung on the wall behind the Headmaster's desk, "that Dumbledore will soon be back among us?"

Harper turned. The wizard was surveying her with great interest. Harper simply nodded. She tugged again on the doorknob behind her back, but it remained immovable.

"Oh good," said the wizard. "It has been very dull without him, very dull indeed."

He settled himself on the throne-like chair on which he had been painted and smiled benignly upon Harry

"Dumbledore thinks very highly of you, as I am sure you know," he said comfortably. "Oh yes. Holds you in great esteem."

The guilt filling the whole of Harper's chest like some monstrous, weighty parasite, now writhed and squirmed. Harper could not stand this, she could not stand being herself any more … She had never felt more trapped inside her own head and body, never wished so intensely that she could be somebody; anybody, else .

The empty fireplace burst into emerald green flame, making Harper leap away from the door, staring at the man spinning inside the grate. As Dumbledore's tall form unfolded itself from the fire, the wizards and witches on the surrounding walls jerked awake, many of them giving cries of welcome.

"Thank you," said Dumbledore softly.

He did not look at Harper at first, but walked over to the perch beside the door and withdrew, from an inside pocket of his robes, the tiny, ugly, featherless Fawkes, whom he placed gently on the tray of soft ashes beneath the golden post where the full-grown Fawkes usually stood.

"Well, Harper." said Dumbledore, finally turning away from the baby bird, "you will be pleased to hear that none of your fellow students are going to suffer lasting damage from the night's events."

Harper tried to say, "Good," but no sound came out. It seemed to her that Dumbledore was reminding her of the amount of damage she had caused, and although Dumbledore was for once looking at her directly, and although his expression was kindly rather than accusatory, Harper could not bear to meet his eyes.

"Madam Pomfrey is patching everybody up," said Dumbledore. "Nymphadora Tonks may need to spend a little time in St Mungo's, but it seems she will make a full recovery."

Harper contented herself with nodding at the carpet, which was growing lighter as the sky outside grew paler. She was sure all the portraits around the room were listening closely to every word Dumbledore spoke, wondering where Dumbledore and Harper had been, and why there had been injuries.

"I know how you're feeling, Harper," said Dumbledore very quietly.

"No, you don't," said Harper, and her voice was suddenly loud and strong; white-hot anger lept inside her; Dumbledore knew nothing about her feelings.

"You see, Dumbledore?" said Phineas Nigellus slyly "Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own -"

"That's enough, Phineas," said Dumbledore.

Harper turned her back on Dumbledore and stared determinedly out of the window. She could see the Quidditch stadium in the distance. Sirius had appeared there once, disguised as the shaggy black dog, so he could watch Harper play … he had probably come to see whether Harper was as good as James had been… Harper had never asked him .

"There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harper," said Dumbledore's voice. "On the contrary… the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."

Harper felt the white-hot anger lick her insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling her with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words.

"My greatest strength, is it?" said Harper, her voice shaking as she stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. "You haven't got a clue… you don't know…"

"What don't I know?" asked Dumbledore calmly.

It was too much. Harper turned around, shaking with rage.

"I don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?"

"Harper, suffering like this proves you are still a women! This pain is part of being human ----."

"THEN - I - DON'T - WANT - TO - BE - HUMAN!" Harper roared, and she seized the delicate silver instrument from the spindle legged table beside her and flung it across the room; it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, "Really!"

"I DON'T CARE!" Harper yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANY MORE..." She felt her eyes tear up, images of her parents, her children, Sirius, Cedric, flowing behind her eyes.

She seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that, too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions.

"You do care," said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harper demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."

"I – DON'T!" Harper screamed, so loudly that she felt her throat might tear, and for a second she wanted to rush at Dumbledore and break him, too; shatter that calm old face, shake him, hurt him, make him feel some tiny part of the horror inside herself.

"Oh, yes, you do," said Dumbledore, still more calmly. "You have now lost your mother, your father, your lover, your children and the closest thing to a parent you have ever known. Of course you care." It was the first time Harper had ever heard him registrar or acknowledge that Harper had indeed had a lover, had been pregnant and had two beautiful children which were taken from her. This only made her angrier.

"YOU DON'T KNOW HOW I FEEL!" Harper roared. "YOU - STANDING THERE – YOU ---"

But words were no longer enough, smashing things was no more help; She wanted to run, she wanted to keep running and never look back, she wanted to be somewhere she could not see the clear blue eyes staring at her, that hatefully calm old face. She turned on her heel and ran to the door, seized the doorknob again and wrenched at it.

But the door would not open.

Harper turned back to Dumbledore.

"Let me out," She said. She was shaking from head to foot.

"No," said Dumbledore, simply. For a few seconds they stared at each other.

"Let me out," Harper said again.

"No," Dumbledore repeated.

"If you don't - if you keep me in here - if you don't let me ---"

"By all means continue destroying my possessions," said Dumbledore serenely. "I daresay I have too many."

He walked around his desk and sat down. behind it, watching Harper

"Let me out," Harper said yet again, in a voice that was cold and almost as calm as Dumbledore's.

"Not until I have had my say," said Dumbledore.

"Do you - do you think I want to - do you think I give a - I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'VE GOT TO SAY!" Harper roared. "I don't want to hear anything you've got to say!"

"You will," said Dumbledore steadily. "Because you are not nearly as angry with me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it."

"What are you talking -?"

"It is my fault that Sirius died," said Dumbledore clearly. "Or should I say, almost entirely my fault - I will not be so arrogant as to claim responsibility for the whole. Sirius was a brave, clever and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to be in danger. Nevertheless, you should never have believed for an instant that there was any necessity for you to go to the Department of Mysteries tonight. If I had been open with you, Harper, as I should have been, you would have known a long time ago that Voldemort might try and lure you to the Department of Mysteries, and you would never have been tricked into going there tonight. And Sirius would not have had to come after you. That blame lies with me, and with me alone."

Harper was still standing with her hand on the doorknob but was unaware of it. She was gazing at Dumbledore, hardly breathing, listening yet barely understanding what she was hearing.

"Please, sit down," said Dumbledore. It was not an order, it was a request.

Harper hesitated, then walked slowly across the room now littered with silver cogs and fragments of wood, and took the seat facing Dumbledore's desk. Harper didn't have to guess to know her eyes were dead and dark green so dark they could appear black.

"Am I to understand," said Phineas Nigellus slowly from Harry's left, "that my great-great-grandson - the last of the Blacks - is dead?"

"Yes, Phineas," said Dumbledore.  
"I don't believe it," said Phineas brusquely.

Harper turned her head in time to see Phineas marching out of his portrait and knew that he had gone to visit his other painting in Grimmauld Place. He would walk, perhaps, from portrait to portrait, calling for Sirius through the house .

"Harper, I owe you an explanation," said Dumbledore. "An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young … and I seem to have forgotten, lately …"

The sun was rising properly now; there was a rim of dazzling orange visible over the mountains and the sky above it was colourless and bright. The light fell upon Dumbledore, upon the silver of his eyebrows and beard, upon the lines gouged deeply into his face.

"I guessed, fifteen years ago." said Dumbledore, "when I saw the scar on your forehead, what it might mean. I guessed that it might be the sign of a connection forged between you and Voldemort."

"You've told me this before, Professor," said Harper bluntly. she did not care about being rude. She did not care about anything very much any more.

"Yes," said Dumbledore apologetically. "Yes, but you see - it is necessary to start with your scar. For it became apparent, shortly after you rejoined the magical world, that I was correct, and that your scar was giving you warnings when Voldemort was close to you, or else feeling powerful emotion."

"I know," said Harper wearily

"...And this ability of yours - to detect Voldemort's presence, even when he is disguised, and to know what he is feeling when his emotions are roused - has become more and more pronounced since Voldemort returned to his own body and his full powers."

Harper did not bother to nod. She knew all of this already.

"More recently" said Dumbledore, "I became concerned that Voldemort might realize that this connection between you exists. Sure enough, there came a time when you entered so far into his mind and thoughts that he sensed your presence. I am speaking, of course, of the night when you witnessed the attack on Mr Weasley"

"Yeah, Snape told me," Harper muttered, she would usually call him Professor Snape or Severus, at least she had ever since...well when he refused to believe her about Voldemort...she had gotten angry at him. Things between them had not been good lately and she was not in the mood to take into account honorifics.

"Professor Snape, Harper" Dumbledore corrected him quietly. "But did you not wonder why it was not I who explained this to you? Why I did not teach you Occlumency? Why I had not so much as looked at you for months?"

Harper looked up. She could see now that Dumbledore looked sad and tired, it made her feel guilty, but she squished it with anger she felt for him.

"Yeah," She mumbled. "Yeah, I wondered."

"You see," Dumbledore continued, "I believed it could not be long before Voldemort attempted to force his way into your mind, to manipulate and misdirect your thoughts, and I was not eager to give him more incentives to do so. I was sure that if he realized that our relationship was - or had ever been - closer than that of headmaster and pupil, he would seize his chance to use you as a means to spy on me. I feared the uses to which he would put you, the possibility that he might try and possess you. Harper, I believe I was right to think that Voldemort would have made use of you in such a way. On those rare occasions when we had close contact, I thought I saw a shadow of him stir behind your eyes …"

Harper remembered the feeling that a dormant snake had risen in her, ready to strike, in those moments when she and Dumbledore had made eye-contact. One of them being when Her children had died.

"Voldemort's aim in possessing you, as he demonstrated tonight, would not have been my destruction. It would have been yours. He hoped, when he possessed you briefly a short while ago, that I would sacrifice you in the hope of killing him. So you see, I have been trying, in distancing myself from you, to protect you, Harper. An old man's mistake …"

He sighed deeply. Harper was letting the words wash over her. She would have been so interested to know all this a few months ago, but now it was meaningless compared to the gaping chasm inside her that was the loss of Sirius, Sam, Lena and even Cedric; none of it mattered …

"Sirius told me you felt Voldemort awake inside you the very night that you had the vision of Arthur Weasley's attack. I knew at once that my worst fears were correct: Voldemort had realized he could use you. In an attempt to arm you against Voldemort's assaults on your mind, I arranged Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape."

He paused. Harper watched the sunlight, which was sliding slowly across the polished surface of Dumbledore's desk, illuminate a silver ink pot and a handsome scarlet quill. Harper could tell that the portraits all around them were awake and listening raptly to Dumbledore's explanation; he could hear the occasional rustle of robes, the slight clearing of a throat. Phineas Nigellus had still not returned … Harper leaned forward but gasped and cried out in pain as she felt her back cracked one last time her ribs, and almost all her upper half's bones felt like they were broken. She felt tears release and faster then she thought was possible Dumbledore was by her side.

"Harper?" He asked and She held up a hand and stopped moving trying to even out her breathing.

"Continue..please." She breathed out, fighting the pain.

"Professor Snape discovered," Dumbledore resumed, "that you had been dreaming about the door to the Department of Mysteries for months. Voldemort, of course, had been obsessed with the possibility of hearing the prophecy ever since he regained his body; and as he dwelled on the door, so did you, though you did not know what it meant."

"And then you saw Rockwood, who worked in the Department of Mysteries before his arrest, telling Voldemort what we had known all along -that the prophecies held in the Ministry of Magic are heavily protected. Only the people to whom they refer can lift them from the shelves without suffering madness: in this case, either Voldemort himself would have to enter the Ministry of Magic, and risk revealing himself at last - or else you would have to take it for him. It became a matter of even greater urgency that you should master Occlumency" Dumbeldore was talking faster now, his hand trying to steady Harper, almost as If trying to take her pain away.

"But I didn't," muttered Harper. She said it aloud to try and ease the dead weight of guilt inside her: a confession must surely relieve some of the terrible pressure squeezing his heart. "I didn't practice, I didn't bother, I couldn't stop myself having those dreams, Hermione kept telling me to do it, if I had he'd never have been able to show me where to go, and - Sirius wouldn't - Sirius wouldn't...Ahhh!" She screamed as she breathed and moved a bit to the side. Her vision was starting to get blurry, but she'd rather feel pain then nothing at all, and she refused Dumbledore's offer to take her to Poppy before the conversation was over.

Something was erupting inside Harper's head now: a need to justify herself, to explain -

"I tried to check he'd really taken Sirius, I went to Umbridge's office, I spoke to Kreacher in the fire and he said Sirius wasn't there, he said he'd gone!"

"Kreacher lied," said Dumbledore calmly. "You are not his master, he could lie to you without even needing to punish himself. Kreacher intended you to go to the Ministry of Magic."

"He - he sent me on purpose?"

"Oh yes. Kreacher, I am afraid, has been serving more than one master for months."

"How?" said Harper blankly. "He hasn't been out of Grimmauld Place for years."

"Kreacher seized his opportunity shortly before Christmas," said Dumbledore, "when Sirius, apparently, shouted at him to "get out". He took Sirius at his word, and interpreted this as an order to leave the house. He went to the only Black family member for whom he had any respect left … Black's cousin Narcissa, sister of Bellatrix and wife of Lucius Malfoy."

"How do you know all this?" Harper said. Her heart was beating very fast. She felt sick. She remembered worrying about Kreacher's odd absence over Christmas, remembered him turning up again in the attic …

"Kreacher told me last night," said Dumbledore. "You see, when you gave Professor Snape that cryptic warning, he realized that you had had a vision of Sirius trapped in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries. He, like you, attempted to contact Sirius at once. I should explain that members of the Order of the Phoenix have more reliable methods of communicating than the fire in Dolores Umbridge's office. Professor Snape found that Sirius was alive and safe in Grimmauld Place." He said this with pity in his eyes, knowing this hurt Harper more then her bones at the moment.

"When, however, you did not return from your trip into the Forest with Dolores Umbridge, Professor Snape grew worried that you still believed Sirius to be a captive of Lord Voldemort's. He alerted certain Order members at once."

Dumbledore heaved a great sigh and continued, "Alastor Moody, Nymphadora Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Remus Lupin were at Headquarters when he made contact. All agreed to go to your aid at once. Professor Snape requested that Sirius remain behind, as he needed somebody to remain at Headquarters to tell me what had happened, for I was due there at any moment. In the meantime he, Professor Snape, intended to search the Forest for you, But Sirius did not wish to remain behind while the others went to search for you. He delegated to Kreacher the task of telling me what had happened. And so it was that when I arrived in Grimmauld Place shortly after they had all left for the Ministry, it was the elf who told me - laughing fit to burst - where Sirius had gone."

"He was laughing?" said Harper in a hollow voice. Images of ways she could kill the damned elf filtered into her mind but then her godfather's face came and then images of her last hours with her beloved children, their loving eyes staring into her own.

"Oh, yes," said Dumbledore. "You see, Kreacher was not able to betray us totally. He is not Secret Keeper for the Order, he could not give the Malfoys our whereabouts, or tell them any of the Order's confidential plans that he had been forbidden to reveal. He was bound by the enchantments of his kind, which is to say that he could not disobey a direct order from his master, Sirius. But he gave Narcissa information of the sort that is very valuable to Voldemort, yet must have seemed much too trivial for Sirius to think of banning him from repeating it."

"Like what?" said Harper.

"Like the fact that the person Sirius cared most about in the world was you," said Dumbledore quietly. "Like the fact that you were coming to regard Sirius as a mixture of father and brother. Voldemort knew already, of course, that Sirius was in the Order, and that you knew where he was - but Kreacher's information made him realize that the one person for whom you would go to any lengths to rescue was Sirius Black."

Harper's lips were cold and numb. Her bones were coming to cold numb feeling as long as she didnt try to move and only breathed through her mouth, short and sweat.  
"So… when I asked Kreacher if Sirius was there last night…"

"The Malfoys - undoubtedly on Voldemort's instructions - had told him he must find a way of keeping Sirius out of the way once you had seen the vision of Sirius being tortured. Then, if you decided to check whether Sirius was at home or not, Kreacher would be able to pretend he was not. Kreacher injured Buckbeak the Hippogriff yesterday, and, at the moment when you made your appearance in the fire, Sirius was upstairs tending to him."

There seemed to be very little air in Harper's lungs; her breathing was quick and shallow.

"...And Kreacher told you all this… and laughed?" She croaked.

"He did not wish to tell me," said Dumbledore. "But I am a sufficiently accomplished Legilimens myself to know when I am being lied to and I - persuaded him - to tell me the full story, before I left for the Department of Mysteries." He was rubbing her back now, trying to ease her muscles, it helped a little but it also hurt more.

"And," whispered Harry, his hands curled in cold fists on his knees, "and Hermione kept telling us to be nice to him."

"She was quite right, Harper," said Dumbledore. "I warned Sirius when we adopted twelve Grimmauld Place as our Headquarters that Kreacher must be treated with kindness and respect. I also told him that Kreacher could be dangerous to us. I do not think Sinus took me very seriously, or that he ever saw Kreacher as a being with feelings as acute as a human's." He pulled his wand to my wrist, and wrinkled his brow before continuing, I knew he had checked my pulse as Poppy was very common for doing it.

"Don't you blame - don't you - talk - about Sirius like -" Harper's breath was constricted, she could not get the words out properly; but the rage that had subsided briefly flared in her again: she would not let Dumbledore criticize Sirius. "Kreacher's a lying - foul - he deserved -"

"Kreacher is what he has been made by wizards, Harry" said Dumbledore. "Yes, he is to be pitied. His existence has been as miserable as your friend Dobby's. He was forced to do Sirius's bidding, because Sirius was the last of the family to which he was enslaved, but he felt no true loyalty to him. And whatever Kreacher's faults, it must be admitted that Sirius did nothing to make Kreacher's lot easier."

"DON'T TALK ABOUT SIRIUS LIKE THAT!" Harper yelled.

She was on her feet again, furious, ready to fly at Dumbledore, who had plainly not understood Sirius at all, how brave he was, how much he had suffered, but the thought was interrupted by her scream as she felt to her knees , her back hurt so bad, she breathed in and out as she layed on her side on the floor. Dumbeldore looked at her in worry, "Please, let me take you to Poppy, Harper." He said but she shook her head and continued on, call her a masochist.

"What about Snape?" Harper spat. "You're not talking about him, are you? When I told him Voldemort had Sirius he just sneered at me as usual -"

"Harper, you know Professor Snape had no choice but to pretend not to take you seriously in front of Dolores Umbridge," said Dumbledore steadily, "As It was she was trying to get him thrown out on accusation of him being the Twins' father; but as I have explained, he informed the Order as soon as possible about what you had said. It was he who deduced where you had gone when you did not return from the Forest. It was he, too, who gave Professor Umbridge fake Veritaserum when she was attempting to force you to tell her Sirius's whereabouts."

Harper disregarded this; She felt a savage pleasure in blaming Snape, it seemed to be easing her own sense of dreadful guilt, and she wanted to hear Dumbledore agree with her.

"Snape - Snape g - goaded Sirius about staying in the house - he made out Sirius was a coward."

"Sirius was much too old and clever to have allowed such feeble taunts to hurt him," said Dumbledore.

"Snape stopped giving me Occlumency lessons!" Harper snarled. "He threw me out of his office!"

"I am aware of it," said Dumbledore heavily "I have already said that it was a mistake for me not to teach you myself, though I was sure, at the time, that nothing could have been more dangerous than to open your mind even further to Voldemort while in my presence -"

"Snape made it worse, my scar always hurt worse after lessons with him," Harper remembered Ron's thoughts on the subject and plunged on "- how do you know he wasn't trying to soften me up for Voldemort, make it easier for him to get inside my..." Harper took a sharp intake of breath as tears fell from her eyes, her vision was fading, and she felt like her insides were leaking out.

"I trust Severus Snape," said Dumbledore simply "But I forgot - another old man's mistake - that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father - I was wrong – at least on some level." He mussed.

"But that's OK, is it?" yelled Harper, ignoring the scandalized faces and disapproving mutterings of the portraits on the walls. "It's OK for Snape to hate my dad, but it's not OK for Sirius to hate Kreacher?"

"Sirius did not hate Kreacher," said Dumbledore. "He regarded him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike … the fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward."

"SO SIRIUS DESERVED WHAT HE GOT, DID HE?" Harper yelled.

"I did not say that, nor will you ever hear me say it," Dumbledore replied quietly. "Sirius was not a cruel man, he was kind to house elves in general. He had no love for Kreacher, because Kreacher was a living reminder of the home Sirius had hated."

"Yeah, he did hate it!' said Harper, her voice cracking, turning her back on Dumbledore no matter the pain it took her to do so. The sun was bright inside the room now and the eyes of all the portraits followed her as she twisted around, without realizing what she was doing, without seeing the office at all. "You made him stay shut up in that house and he hated it, that's why he wanted to get out last night..."

"I was trying to keep Sirius alive," said Dumbledore quietly, putting his wrinkled hand on her shoulder gentley, not wishing to upset her obvious injuries.

"People don't like being locked up!" Harper said furiously, rounding on him, sitting up and turning her body to stair at him, not matter the fact she thought her ribs had popped out of her side, and she was bleeding, she didn't think she really was but she felt like it. "You did it to me all last summer..

Dumbledore closed his eyes and buried his face in his long fingered hands. Harper watched him, but this uncharacteristic sign of exhaustion, or sadness, or whatever it was from Dumbledore, did not soften her. On the contrary, she felt even angrier that Dumbledore was showing signs of weakness. He had no business being weak when Harper wanted to rage and storm at him.

Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harper through his half-moon glasses.

"It is time," he said, "for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harper. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything. I ask only a little patience. You will have your chance to rage at me - to do whatever you like - when I have finished. I will not stop you."

Harper glared at him for a moment, then flung herself - literally - back into the chair opposite Dumbledore and waited. The pain was still there but she was ignoring, almost embracing it.

Dumbledore stared for a moment at the sunlit grounds outside the window, then looked back at Harper and after going back to his seat said, "Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harper, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well - not **quite** whole. You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years."

He paused. Harper said nothing.

"You might ask - and with good reason - why it had to be so. Why could some wizarding family not have taken you in? Many would have done so more than gladly, would have been honored and delighted to raise you as a son." He stopped and drew in a breath.

"My answer is that my priority was to keep you alive. You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but I realized. Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters - and many of them are almost as terrible as he - were still at large, angry, desperate and violent. And I had to make my decision, too, with regard to the years ahead. Did I believe that Voldemort was gone for ever? No. I knew not whether it would be ten, twenty or fifty years before he returned, but I was sure he would do so, and I was sure, too, knowing him as I have done, that he would not rest until he killed you." He pulled out a pale blue potion and slide it over to me, I stared at it and read the label. Pain and numbing potion, I uncorked it and drank it in a gulp before staring at him, feeling the potion kick in.

"I knew that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is perhaps more extensive than any wizard alive. I knew that even my most complex and powerful protective spells and charms were unlikely to be invincible if he ever returned to full power; But I knew, too, where Voldemort was weak. And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated - to his cost. I am speaking, of course, of the fact that your mother died to save you. She gave you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother's blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative."

"She doesn't love me," said Harper at once. "She doesn't give a damn..."

"But she took you," Dumbledore cut across him. "She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you. Your mother's sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you."

"I still don't..."

"While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, whilst you are there he cannot hurt you. Your aunt knows this. I explained what I had done in the letter I left, with you, on her doorstep. She knows that allowing you house room may well have kept you alive for the past fifteen years."

"Wait," said Harper. "Wait a moment."  
She sat up straighter in her chair happy about having the pain potion before, staring at Dumbledore.

"You sent that Howler. You told her to remember - it was your voice -"

"I thought," said Dumbledore, inclining his head slightly, "that she might need reminding of the pact she had sealed by taking you. I suspected the Dementor attack might have awoken her to the dangers of having you as a surrogate Daughter."

"It did," said Harry quietly. "Well - my uncle more than her. He wanted to chuck me out, but after the Howler came she - she said I had to stay"

She stared at the floor for a moment, then said, "But what's this got to do with..."

She could not say Sirius's name.

"Five years ago, then," continued Dumbledore, as though he had not paused in his story, "you arrived at Hogwarts, neither as happy nor as well-nourished as I would have liked, perhaps, yet alive and healthy You were not a pampered little prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well."

"...And then … well, you will remember the events of your first year at Hogwarts quite as clearly as I do. You rose magnificently to the challenge that faced you and sooner - much sooner - than I had anticipated, you found yourself face to face with Voldemort. You survived again. You did more. You delayed his return to full power and strength. You fought a man's fight. I was … prouder of you than I can say."

"Yet there was a flaw in this wonderful plan of mine," said Dumbledore. "An obvious flaw that I knew, even then, might be the undoing of it all. And yet, knowing how important it was that my plan should succeed, I told myself that I would not permit this flaw to ruin it. I alone could prevent this, so I alone must be strong. And here was my first test, as you lay in the hospital wing, weak from your struggle with Voldemort."

"I don't understand what you're saying," said Harper.

"Don't you remember asking me, as you lay in the hospital wing, why Voldemort had tried to kill you when you were a baby?"

Harper nodded.  
"Ought I to have told you then?"

Harper stared into the blue eyes and said nothing, but her heart was racing again.

"You do not see the flaw in the plan yet? No … perhaps not. Well, as you know, I decided not to answer you. Eleven, I told myself, was much too young to know. I had never intended to tell you when you were eleven. The knowledge would be too much at such a young age.

I should have recognized the danger signs then. I should have asked myself why I did not feel more disturbed that you had already asked me the question to which I knew, one day, I must give a terrible answer. I should have recognized that I was too happy to think that I did not have to do it on that particular day … YOU were too young, much too young.

And so we entered your second year at Hogwarts. And once again you met challenges even grown wizards have never faced: once again you acquitted yourself beyond my wildest dreams. You did not ask me again, however, why Voldemort had left that marl; on you. We discussed your scar, oh yes … we came very, very

close to the subject. Why did I not tell you everything?

Well, it seemed to me that twelve was, after all, hardly better than eleven to receive such information. I allowed you to leave my presence, bloodstained, exhausted but exhilarated, and if I felt a twinge of unease that I ought, perhaps, to have told you then, it was swiftly silenced. You were still so young, you see, and I could not find it in myself to spoil that night of triumph …

Do you see, Harper? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."

"I don't..."

"I cared about you to much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act.

Is there a defense? I defy anyone who has watched you as I have - and I have watched you more closely than you can have imagined - not to want to save you more pain than you had already suffered. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands.

We entered your third year. I watched from afar as you struggled to repel Dementors, as you found Sirius, learned what he was and rescued him. Was I to tell you then, at the moment when you had triumphantly snatched your godfather from the jaws of the Ministry? But now, at the age of thirteen, my excuses were running out. Young you might be, but you had proved you were exceptional. My conscience was uneasy, Rosie. I knew the time must come soon …" He stopped after that, and Harper felt my heart fill with guilt and a warm feeling at hearing him use the nickname which she had no idea how it had come about, only that her mother called me Rose and Rosie most the time, and that only she knew the real reason and she wasn't talking anytime soon.

"...But you came out of the maze last year, having watched Cedric Diggory die – Watched your love die, having escaped death so narrowly yourself … and I did not tell you, though I knew, now Voldemort had returned, I must do it soon. And now, tonight, I know you have long been ready for the knowledge I have kept from you for so long, because you have proved that I should have placed the burden upon you before this. My only defence is this: I have watched you struggling under more burdens than any student who has ever passed through this school and I could not bring myself to add another - the greatest one of all."

Harper waited, but Dumbledore did not speak.  
"I still don't understand."

"Voldemort tried to kill you when you were a child because of a prophecy made shortly before your birth. He knew the prophecy had been made, though he did not know its full contents. He set out to kill you when you were still a baby, believing he was fulfilling the terms of the prophecy. He discovered, to his cost, that he was mistaken, when the curse intended to kill you backfired. And so, since his return to his body, and particularly since your extraordinary escape from him last year, he has been determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. This is the weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his return: the knowledge of how to destroy you."

The sun had risen fully now: Dumbledore's office was bathed in it. The glass case in which the sword of Godric Gryffindor resided gleamed white and opaque, the fragments of the instruments Harper had thrown to the floor glistened like raindrops, and behind her, the baby Fawkes made soft chirruping noises in his nest of ashes.

"The prophecy's smashed," Harper said blankly. "I was pulling Neville up those benches in the - the room where the archway was, and I ripped his robes and it fell …"

"The thing that smashed was merely the record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly'

"Who heard it?" asked Harper as she sat up straighter, the potion from earlier was wearing off and her back was starting to ache, she was sure it was broken, though she didn't care and she thought she knew the answer to her earlier question already, she wished to hear it from the goats mouth, so to say.

"I did," said Dumbledore. "On a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a room above the bar at the Hog's Head inn. I had gone there to see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all. The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post. I turned to leave."

Dumbledore got to his feet and walked past Harper to the black cabinet that stood beside Fawkes's perch. He bent down, slid back a catch and took from inside it the shallow stone basin, carved with runes around the edges, in which Harper had seen her father tormenting Snape. Dumbledore walked back to the desk, placed the Pensieve upon it, and raised his wand to his own temple. From it, he withdrew silvery, gossamer-fine strands of thought clinging to the wand and deposited them into the basin. He sat back down behind his desk and watched his thoughts swirl and drift inside the Pensieve for a moment. Then, with a sigh, he raised his wand and prodded the silvery substance with its tip.

A figure rose out of it, draped in shawls, her eyes magnified to

enormous size behind her glasses, and she revolved slowly; her feet in the basin. But when Sybill Trelawney spoke, it was not in her usual ethereal, mystic voice, but in the harsh, hoarse tones Harry had heard her use once before:

_"The one with the power to vanquish the- Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies_ … _and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have_

_power the Dark Lord knows not_ … _and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives_ … _the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies_ …'

The slowly revolving Professor Trelawney sank back into the silver mass below and vanished.

The silence within the office was absolute. Neither Dumbledore nor Harper nor any of the portraits made a sound. Even Fawkes had fallen silent. So needless to say all living things jumped when she yelled.

"I just lost my Children! Now my godfather, and you have the nerve to do this to me!?" She burst out but then calmed down and asked.

"Professor Dumbledore?'" Harper said very quietly, for Dumbledore, still staring at the Pensieve, seemed completely lost in thought. It .. did that mean … what did that mean?

"It meant," said Dumbledore, as if reading her mind, "that the person who has the only chance of conquering Lord Voldemort for good was born at the end of July, nearly sixteen years ago. This boy would be born to parents who had already defied Voldemort three times."

Harper felt as though something was closing in on her. Her breathing seemed difficult again.

"It means – me? That..it said HIM..I am a girl, not a boy."  
Dumbledore surveyed him for a moment through his glasses.

"The odd thing, Harper," he said softly, "is that it may not have meant you at all. Sybill's prophecy could have applied to two others, one's we thought for sure as Lily said she was having a boy, both born at the end of July that year, both of whom had parents in the Order of the Phoenix, both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom."

"But then … but then, why was it my name on the prophecy and not Neville's? He seems like the most liekly, I wasn – I'm not -" Harper couldnt quite get the words out, but he seemed to know what she ment.

"The official record was re-labelled after Voldemort's attack on you as a child," said Dumbledore. "It seemed plain to the keeper of the Hall of Prophecy that Voldemort could only have tried to kill you because he knew you to be the one to whom Sybill was referring...The chance that Lily had indeed had a girl instead of a boy, took us all by surprise. They were already ready to name you Harry James Potter, but when you came out a girl, Lily refused to humor your father and name you Harriet Jameson Potter. Prophecy's are fickle things Harper."

"Then - it might not be me?" said Harper, hope feeling her voice.

"I am afraid," said Dumbledore slowly, looking as though every word cost him a great effort, "that there is no doubt that it is you."

"But you said - Neville was born at the end of July, too - and his mum and dad..."

"You are forgetting the next part of the prophecy, the final identifying feature of the '_boy' _," He said this part with amusement, "... who could vanquish Voldemort … Voldemort himself would _mark him as his equal._ And so he did, Harper He chose you, not Neville. He gave you the scar that has proved both blessing and curse."

"But he might have chosen wrong!" said Harper. "He might have marked the wrong person!"

"He chose the one he thought most likely to be a danger to him," said Dumbledore. "And notice this, Harper: he chose, not the pureblood (which, according to his creed, is the only kind of wizard worth being or knowing) but the half-blood, like himself. He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you, and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you, as he intended, but gave you powers, and a future, which have fitted you to escape him not once, but four times so far - something that neither your parents, nor Neville's parents, ever achieved."

"Of course He didnt realise you were a girl...Lily and James had decied to tell everyone but Sirius, Remus, and me that you had been born a boy." Dumbdore said and he chuckled as if remembering it.

"Why did he do it, then?" asked Harper, who felt numb and cold. "Why did he try and kill me as a baby? He should have waited to see whether Neville or I looked more dangerous when we were older and tried to kill whoever it was then..."

"That might, indeed, have been the more practical course," said Dumbledore, "except that Voldemort's information about the prophecy was incomplete. The Hog's Head inn, which Sybill chose for its cheapness, has long attracted, shall we say, a more interesting clientele than the Three Broomsticks. As you and your friends found out to your cost, and I to mine that night, it is a place where it is never safe to assure you are not being overheard. Of course, I had not dreamed, when I set out to meet Sybill Trelawney, that I would hear anything worth overhearing. My - our - one stroke of good fortune was that the eavesdropper was detected only a short way into the prophecy and thrown from the building."

"So he only heard -?"

"He heard only the beginning, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort. Consequently, he could not warn his master that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you, and marking you as his equal. So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, that it might be wise to wait, to learn more. He did not know that you would have _power the Dark Lord knows not"_

"But I don't!" said Harper, in a strangled voice. "I haven't any powers he hasn't got, I couldn't fight the way he did tonight, I can't possess people or - or kill them -"

"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries," interrupted Dumbledore, "that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."

Harper closed her eyes - not only from the guilt but from the physical pain she was now in. If she had not gone to save Sirius, Sirius would not have died… More to stave off the moment when he would have to think of Sirius again, Harper asked, without caring much about the answer, "The end of the prophecy… it was something about… neither can live…"

"… while the other survives," said Dumbledore.

"So," said Harper, dredging up the words from what felt like a deep well of despair inside her, "so does that mean that… that one of us has got to kill the other one… in the end?"

"Yes," said Dumbledore sadly, bowing his head slightly.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Somewhere far beyond the office walls, Harper could hear the sound of voices, students heading down to the Great Hall for an early breakfast, perhaps. It seemed impossible that there could be people in the world who still desired food, who laughed, who neither knew nor cared that Sirius Black was gone for ever. Sirius seemed a million miles away already; even now a part of Harper still believed that if she had only pulled back that veil, she would have found Sirius looking back at her, greeting her, perhaps, with his laugh like a bark…

"I feel I owe you another explanation, Harper," said Dumbledore hesitantly. "You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as a prefect? I must confess… that I rather thought… you had enough responsibility to be going on with. Ms. Granger had already proved herself before now, and I assumed, you'd rather lose the position to her then to someone else."

Harper looked up at him and saw a tear trickling down Dumbledore's face into his long silver beard, she wouldn't forgive him now, but maybe in the future, right now though her head was pounding and her insides felt like mush. Her bones were screaming and she was losing even more of her vision, he was now just a blur of white and blue.

"I..I think I need the...Poppy." Was the last word she got out before she succumbed to darkness.


End file.
